I Can Figure This Out
September 23, 2013 4:15 PM   Subscribe

Naya's Quest is the new game from Terry Cavanagh. It looks like a simple isometric-view platformer but every level (once the game proper starts) is essentially an optical illusion. It will do your head in. In the best possible way.

Cavanagh's blog has more, including stuff about the soundtrack on Bandcamp and several posts about the making of the game, as well as the making of Bosca Ceoil (previously), the software he used to make the soundtrack.

Discussion on JayIsGames suggests that once you have completed it the first time it changes. Argh! And also squee!

Previous Cavanaghery: 1, 2, 3
posted by motty (16 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
Cross-section scanner!
posted by box at 4:21 PM on September 23, 2013


Ow! My assumptions!
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:32 PM on September 23, 2013 [2 favorites]


Ow! My inability to press X when I mean X!
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:35 PM on September 23, 2013 [6 favorites]


Playing with perspective reminds me of Echochrome, in a good way. Also reminds me that I should really pick up Super Mario 3D Land already.

I'm glad different control schemes are provided, I keep walking off panels with the default ("no I meant turn left, not walk down....")
posted by Maxson at 4:42 PM on September 23, 2013


hal_c_on - There should be a German word for that feel...
posted by joecacti at 4:53 PM on September 23, 2013


No, hal_c_on, there's supposed to be a game inside, and it was even a sort of fun game, though I gave up before the end (the "q-bert" stage got me)
posted by jepler at 5:16 PM on September 23, 2013


The game is a bit buggy. Twice I've gotten it into a state where I've had to reload to proceed.
posted by zsazsa at 5:33 PM on September 23, 2013


I had a bug where half of the floor disappeared. Thankfully it was in a save area, so I was able to trial-and-error my way back to the previous screen. The floor reappeared when I came back.

The game is relatively short so it's worth soldiering through the bugs to finish it. There's a New Game+ that's refreshing.
posted by Maxson at 5:55 PM on September 23, 2013


The lives system is incredibly annoying when pared with gameplay that isn't that fun in the first place. For me, the desire to not spear my monitor with the keyboard overwhelmed my pleasure from the nice graphical style, the ambiance, and the interesting story and I closed the tab without much remorse.
posted by Quilford at 8:57 PM on September 23, 2013


Yeah, I'm not sure why he did the lives system like that, considering that another game he's well-known for, VVVVVV, has a sometimes brutal difficulty level but has unlimited lives and very quick respawn.

But I do think the gameplay is fun. I liked the puzzles.
posted by zsazsa at 9:12 PM on September 23, 2013


Who the hell thinks that mapping N-W-S-E keys to NW-SW-SE-SW directions is a good idea? Clever little game, but I gave up on it after one too many death where I pressed the wrong intended direction.
posted by salmacis at 1:00 AM on September 24, 2013 [1 favorite]


This has been compared to Echochrome above and in other places on the net, but I haven't yet seen anything from it that looks too different from Solstice and Equinox (except for the scanner).
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 4:04 AM on September 24, 2013


Who the hell thinks that mapping N-W-S-E keys to NW-SW-SE-SW directions is a good idea? Clever little game, but I gave up on it after one too many death where I pressed the wrong intended direction.

I feel like I would've been able to play it longer if the keys had been anything except the arrow keys. Any 4 letters arranged like a diamond - I-O-K-L for example - would have been far superior to the damn arrow keys.
posted by ish__ at 2:45 PM on September 24, 2013


Really fun. I gave up trying to understand the actual perspective on most levels and just trusted the scanner though. Except for the orthographic projection that is.
posted by rouftop at 2:31 PM on September 25, 2013


Yeah, I thought I would eventually get some gut feel for the different ways to interpret the perspective, but even with the scanner I had a hell of a time disregarding what my eyes wanted me to think.
posted by mbrubeck at 2:39 PM on September 25, 2013


There's an interesting write-up of the game here - it seems to address pretty much all of the non-bug issues with the game that people have raised up till now.
posted by motty at 6:48 PM on September 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


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